Traveling with Pomegranates Read Online Free PDF Page B

never won anything. Winning second felt as good as finishing first. I didn’t know I had it in me. It made me wonder what else I could do that I wasn’t aware of. I wore the Nike Air sneakers that had carried me across the finish line everywhere for a long time, and when I finally retired them, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.
    The stirring and surprising events of the trip slowly began to unravel my old self. Strolling beneath the Lion Gate in Mycenae, teetering over a footbridge a thousand feet in the air in Meteora, eating pita and tzatziki like chips and salsa—again and again I felt the intensity of being alive, as if my destiny was pooling in around my feet. The experiences I was having seemed to be refashioning me. They were returning me to myself.
    “There is a name for what happened to you,” Kristina told me at the end of the trip. “It’s called the Greek Miracle.”
    On the last day, in a small shop in the Plaka, the oldest quarter in Athens, I bought a silver ring with Athena’s image carved on it, then climbed the hill to the Acropolis, where I found the slab of surfboard-shaped marble near the Parthenon. Sitting on it, I unceremoniously slid the ring onto the finger on my left hand, the one reserved for wedding rings. The ring was about Greece and staying connected to the fire this place lit in me. It was a way to be reminded of Athena’s qualities and the potential to find them in myself.
    As I lingered there, an awareness that had been growing in me throughout the trip coalesced and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I decided I would go to graduate school and study ancient Greek history.
    On some level this made practical sense—I was a history major and graduate school seemed a smart choice. But it wasn’t just pragmatic. I had, by now, been swept off my feet by Greece in every way. When the idea presented itself, I felt a snap of brightness inside. Later it would remind me of the click inside a kaleidoscope when all the tumbling pieces merge suddenly into a pattern of radiance. That was my moment .
    That same night, three Fun Girls and I walked blocks through the Plaka, searching for a restaurant, but all the tables at the outdoor cafés were occupied. Finally, huddling on the sidewalk, we discussed options. Should we go back to the hotel to eat? I was ready to buy gyro meat on a stick from a walk-up counter, but the Fun Girls insisted we find a sit-down restaurant. “Couldn’t we just ask a local?” one of them suggested. She nodded at a tall, dark-haired guy standing behind us. He looked about our age, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. “How about him?” she said. They looked at me. Why me?
    “Just ask him,” she said, and they all piped up in agreement.
    He seemed harmless enough. As I walked over to him, it occurred to me he might not even speak English.
    “Excuse me,” I said.
    He pulled his hands out of his pockets and looked at me. He was—how shall I put it?—a breathing Charioteer. “Hello,” he said.
    “Um, my friends and I were wondering if you could tell us where we might find a place to eat.” I pointed to the clump of girls.
    He glanced over at them. “I’m Demetri,” he said to me with a thick Greek accent.
    “Oh, hi. I’m Ann.” Then, for some reason, we shook hands like it was a formal occasion.
    “I’m waiting on my friend,” he said, pointing to a guy on a pay phone. “We’re meeting a group for dinner. All of you can join us, if you like. It’s not far.”
    I motioned the girls over.
    When his friend hung up the phone, he found Demetri surrounded by four American girls. Man, what did you do? his look suggested, and Demetri smiled at him and shrugged.
    The restaurant was packed with locals, pulsing with syrtaki music and Greek dancing. It wasn’t long after the rest of their friends arrived that the young women in the group began to ask what American “boys” were like, which I left to the others to explain, this being a